Taste with me, then, the 2004 Carneros Chardonnay ($20). This one is a charmer, replete with ripe peach and fresh dairy cream, neatly framed by French bread bakery smells of oak, and finished with hints of caramel that serve to inflame the slightest pangs of huger into full-blown appetite. This is the old “full and round” school of Chardonnay, and Trujillo has pulled it off so well that, contrary to what one might expect, it works, and works rather well. This is just the sort of wine I would want with a swordfish steak, for example, that might have been cooked a bit too well and is, to say it nicely, a teensy bit dried out. You see, this is just the sort of wine that would save the day, adding a moist, tongue-teasing component that would rescue that sort of culinary faux pas.

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